jacobs-greenwood Katharine Hepburn won the first of her record four Best Actress Academy Awards playing an actress; one from a small town, with stars in her eyes, that makes her way to New York to be a star.When first we see her, she is wistfully admiring the paintings hung on the walls of a theater lobby of Ethel Barrymore, Sarah Bernhardt etc.. She makes her way to the offices of a successful producer she'd heard of, Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou). He is conspiring with his writer/friend Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) to get Rita Vernon (Mary Duncan), an actress they work with, to do a mediocre play and ultimately star in one of Sheridan's plays.At the same time, in Easton's office reception area, Eva Lovelace (Hepburn) meets Hedges ( C. Aubrey Smith), a character actor who's also hoping to get a part in the play. Eva's "don't take no for an answer" appeal charms Hedges into "taking her on" as a student, for future payment, and her persistence also enables her to meet Easton and Sheridan.After an indeterminate amount of time has passed, we learn that Eva got a chance to play a small part in an Easton production, did not do well, and is now literally a "starving artist" living in the streets. After a successful opening night of a different Easton play, Hedges finds Eva in a small coffee shop and insists on helping her home. However, since he was on his way to a party at Easton's place, he takes her there instead.There she meets several famous people including another producer and a critic, while getting rather inebriated herself. Her true personality and her persistent outgoing nature lead her to perform a scene from Romeo and Juliet in front of the partygoers, causing Sheridan to fall for her. However, she passes out in Easton's lap and, later, spends the night with him. The next morning, not realizing Sheridan's infatuation with her, Easton tells him what happened and asks him to help him get rid of his one night stand.But, never fear, all will turn out O.K. in the end. A happy Hollywood ending using a "much duplicated since" plot vehicle will bring "us" what we all want.

MARIO GAUCI When Katharine Hepburn first appeared on cinema screens, she was deemed a great new star, even winning an Oscar – for the film under review – almost instantly; however, before long, audiences had grown tired of her particular brand of histrionics and the actress was quickly declared "box-office poison"! She then wisely changed pace to screwball comedy with Howard Hawks' BRINGING UP BABY (1938), was subsequently handed a once-in-a-lifetime part on a silver platter (by playwright and personal friend Philip Barry, no less!) with "The Philadelphia Story" (superbly filmed by George Cukor in 1940), eventually became an institution when she teamed up (for 9 films and in real life) with Spencer Tracy, and ultimately grew into the "First Lady of Acting" – going on to win 3 more golden statuettes, a record, several years after her first! But, for what it is worth, it all started here...Truth be told, I have never been much of a fan of Hepburn's – though I concede that she has appeared in many a fine film throughout her lengthy career. Anyway, the role she plays here fits her like a glove i.e. that of an ambitious young actress rising to the top out of pure chance and sacrificing stardom for love (indeed, the title is a trade phrase for such meteoric members of the profession). Actually, the narrative is not quite as maudlin as it appears from this plot line – and, yet, the brief 74-minute running-time does not give it much of a chance either: we are told that Hepburn seeks acting lessons from aged luminary C. Aubrey Smith (but we never see them at it) and, crucially, her crowning achievement on the stage is only represented by the enthusiastic applause of the audience and the bows she takes at the curtain call!! That said, her thespian skills are displayed in a drunken party sequence at the home of her producer (Adolphe Menjou, with whom Hepburn would be reunited for another classic about the artistic vocation i.e. STAGE DOOR {1937}), where she dutifully quotes a couple of Shakespearean perennials ("Hamlet", "Romeo And Juliet")! For the record, director Sherman had himself been a prominent actor (his most notable appearance perhaps being that of the washed-up film director in Cukor's WHAT PRICE Hollywood? {1932}) who briefly made the switch behind the camera before his untimely death in 1934.The afore-mentioned STAGE DOOR was characterized by the bitchiness among the myriad female performers, here represented by the original temperamental (and blackmailing!) star of the production which ultimately gives understudy Hepburn her one shot at glory. The heroine (which, at a low ebb in her striving to make it on her own, is reduced to appearing in vaudeville!) is infatuated with the much older Menjou (who quashes her romantic illusions by stating that she now belongs to no man but to Broadway alone, a line which has since become a cliché in this type of film!); consequently, she overlooks the attentions of love-struck young author Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (playing a character named Joseph Sheridan!). In the film's closing moments, after finally confessing his feelings to her but ready to back down so as not to be in the way of her success, she is persuaded to make the right choice for herself (obviously, happiness) by the company's elderly personal assistant – herself a former leading light of the so-called "Great White Way" but whose single-minded pursuit of fame had rendered lonely and bitter! It must be pointed out that MORNING GLORY would be remade 25 years later by Sidney Lumet: renamed STAGE STRUCK, it was still good but inferior overall, and starred Susan Strasberg, Henry Fonda, Christopher Plummer and Herbert Marshall.

adt125 A rather ordinary film made interesting by the presence and acting of Hepburn.Kate starts wonderfully in this, developing the character well and with lovely control. She moves onto a little Shakespeare Cameo that was well done if a bit of a corny device in the film. From here her earlier character seems to get abandoned and then come some mixed efforts - some good and some old fashioned over-acting that I thought was deliberate, but actually turned out to be Kater trying to act the character. Kate had some trouble staying in character for this role - but I am sure that is because of the haphazard assemblage of the film.That the character Kate created in the early scenes suddenly goes to bed with some aging guy stretches credulity and quite distasteful, especially the scene where Fairbanks realizes this has happened. The older guy was neither charismatic, handsome of trying to woo Kate - we are given no hints as to how Kate suddenly decided to give herself to him and then somehow become smitten with him. Except maybe that with some strange leap of logic with no supporting data that she had decided to sleep her way to the top.An uneven film, lots of glitches and would be of little interest except to see the evolution of Kate Hepburn's talents which definitely she showed in parts. However with Kate Hepburn as with that other great Mary Pickford, just appearing in front of the camera creates a magnetic appeal and a sense of fascination.I am not sure how Kate won an Oscar for this, she was great in parts but not so great in many other parts of the film.

blanche-2 Katharine Hepburn is a young actress who comes to New York for fame and fortune in "Morning Glory," also starring Adolphe Menjou, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and C. Aubrey Smith. Eva Lovelace ("my stage name, I can shorten it if you want something else") is eccentric, fast-talking, and has many fantasies about acting and theater. The reality hits hard as at one point, she seems not only starving but homeless. Noting that she is in trouble, an elderly actor, Hedges (Smith) who meets her in producer Louis Easton's (Menjou) office invites her to Easton's opening night party. With no food in her stomach, she gets drunk recites some monologues, and ends up in bed with Easton. She's in love; he never wants to see her again. Meanwhile, Easton's writer Sheridan (Fairbanks) has fallen in love with her.Dated, melodramatic, predictable - "Morning Glory" is all of that but somehow the theatrical repartee and attitudes ring true - some things never change, including competition between actresses. Hepburn is very young, slim and pretty, and she does an excellent job as a young woman embarking on a new life. Why with Fairbanks Jr. staring her in the face she fell for Menjou I'll never know. Fairbanks is incredibly young here but very effective. Menjou is perfect as an elegant, gracious producer who in the end is all business. C. Aubrey Smith gives a dignified and lovely performance as Hedges.The ending does leave one asking, is Eva Lovelace to be a morning glory (i.e., flash in the pan) or not? Somehow whatever happens, the film leaves you with the impression that Eva will make it work in her own eccentric way.